There’s an expression about internet marketing, which is, “the money is in the list”.  The more people you have the ability to reach out to and interact with, the more money you’ll make.  This is as true in the music business as it is in any other industry.  Half the battle when it comes to monetizing music is marketing.  It’s probably more than half the battle.  You can have the greatest song or album in the world, but if no one knows about it, no one is going to listen to it and you’re going to have a really hard time earning any income from it.

Email marketing has been my primary means of communicating with my audience and subscribers for over a decade.  I’ve made a full time income almost solely through email marketing for twelve years now.  I’ve dabbled in other marketing channels, things like Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Podcasting and so on with mixed results.  But my bread and butter has always been, and remains to be, email marketing.  It’s the most efficient and simple method for communicating with your followers, fans and so on.

I’m still amazed every time I compose an email and an offer, send it out to my list and watch as orders start coming in.  Email marketing is such an easy, low cost way of building rapport with your followers, offering value and generating sales.  There’s almost no overhead, you can do it from anywhere at anytime, and despite what I’ve heard some people claim, it still works as well as it ever has.

In the beginning I primarily used email marketing as a means of selling my courses, directories and tools I created that had helped me move forward in the music business.  But over time, it occurred to me that I could apply the same concepts and principles to marketing my own music.  Albeit, it’s a little different and arguably harder to convert music listeners to paying customers.  With the abundance of free music, you need to have a really compelling offer to get people to whip out their credit cards and buy your music and support your art.  But if your music is great and you’re able to create a compelling offer, there’s no reason you can’t generate, at the very least, some nice supplemental income from your music, in addition to your other revenue streams like licensing, performing, etc. 

But, of course, before you can really even begin to consider how to package and sell your music, you need to have an email list, a list of potential customers, to sell your music to. 

Here are some tips on how to go about building your email list so that you can create an ongoing, interactive relationship with your audience.

Landing Page

A landing page is a page where you’ll collect email addresses from people who visit your site.  It could be your home page, or another dedicated page on your site.  The more prominent you make it the better.  On your landing page you’re going to convince people to give you their email address and join your email list.  The most common and effective way of doing this is offering something in return.  Most people aren’t going to just give you their email address and allow you to spam them with your sales pitch for your latest CD or Spotify release.  You’re going to need to provide something of value in exchange for them joining your list.  It needs to be a fair exchange.  Your goal isn’t to start trying to sell people stuff right away.  Your goal initially is to provide real, tangible value.

Provide Value

How you provide value is up to you.  But it needs to real, genuine value.  I’ll give you a couple ideas based on my own websites.  For my music licensing website, HTLYM Premium, I offer a free four-hour course on music licensing.  This course took me about two months to write, record and edit.  I put a lot of work into the course and if people never spend a dime on my more in depth resources, they’ll still get a ton of value out of my free course.   I don’t feel bad if they don’t choose to go further with my resources.  Not everyone is able to, can afford to or wants to.  That’s ok.  My goal, first and foremost, is to make a good impression and provide real, tangible value.  Only then, is there a chance someone will want to explore my premium resources further.  If what you provide for free doesn’t impress people, it’s highly unlikely they’re going to come back and purchase products from you down the road.

Here's my landing page for my free course:
https://www.htlympremium.com/free-course.html
  

Also, sometimes people will consume your free content for years before they decide to purchase anything from you. This isn't a get rick quick scheme. Email marketing, and really any form of marketing and branding, is a long-term relationship you’re building with your followers, subscribers, fans, etc, that often plays out over years.  I’ve lost count of how many times someone has written me and said something along the lines of, “I’ve been on your newsletter for years now and have been following your blog and podcast, and just decided to join your premium site (or purchase one of my courses)”.   Focus on creating a real, genuine relationship over time with your audience, and don’t worry too much about money and sales initially.  If you're providing value, it will come back to you sooner or later.

When it comes to music, it can be a little trickier due to market dynamics, but the principle is the exact same.  What can you offer your fans, that has genuine value, that they can’t get anywhere else? I focus on giving subscribers to my music site (Aaron Davison.net) access to music and versions of my tracks they can’t get anywhere else.  Things like demos of new songs, behind the scenes footage, unreleased material, the inspiration behind the music, and so on. 

You can join my email list for my music and learn more here:
https://www.aarondavison.net/

There’s little incentive for people to join your email list if you’re simply going to send them tracks they can get for free elsewhere online.  Focus on creating unique content for subscribers of your email list and give them access to content they can’t get anywhere else.  Focus on building a real connection with your fans, as opposed to just spamming them with your sales pitches.  In fact, don’t even think about making sales or selling stuff initially.  Focus on giving value and your fans will give you value in return over time, by consuming and purchasing your content.

Get Started

For a powerful, simplified tool to send emails, create pages, and automate your email marketing, check out Get Response.  I’ve recently started using this platform and the results have been nothing short of spectacular.  They provide all the tools you need to run a successful email marketing campaign in one place, including landing pages, email marketing, marketing automation, webinars, sign up forms and more. 

If I had access to this tool when I started getting into email marketing twelve years ago I would have saved hundreds of hours.

Get Response is an awesome email marketing tool and you can try them for free for 30 days here. (no credit card required)

Happy Music making and music marketing!

-Aaron